Free WordPress Hosting Providers: 6 Websites, Pros and Cons

Have you ever thought about free WordPress hosting?

Alternatively, hosting your website Internet for free?

Well, it sounds interesting. However, free web hosting services allow of creating websites using the WordPress Content Management System or WordPress CMS.

Getting a space for yourself on the internet is the dream of everyone. I remember the days I thought it needed hundreds of or thousands of money to host a website or blog on the internet.

However, those days are gone, as many web hosting providers have started giving away free web space for everyone worldwide.

If you have the ambition to be the next pro blogger, or Internet marketer, you can start from zero to build your dream; convert your dream into a reality.

You are the NEXT Pro Blogger! You can do that. I don’t want to mislead you by recommending free WordPress hostings here. They have a lot of limitations and prevent you from being a successful entrepreneur. What I recommend is to buy inexpensive WordPress hosting. 

Bluehost is my best and first choice if I am on your stand. Unlimited disk space, unlimited data transfer, and user-friendly cPanel are some of their outstanding features. Bluehost WordPress hosting offers a 1-click auto-installer tool that makes it’s super easy to start your blog today. 

What is free WordPress hosting?

I know some of you might have the idea you have to pay for everything you do online. However, that is not true.

For instance, you can start making money online without spending money. You can do joint ventures with other marketers, engage in freelancing in workshops such as Fiverr and Freelancer, and write for other blogs to make extra cash.

Alternatively, you can make a theme, plugin, or mobile application to make a residual income from home. All these tasks can be done without spending a dime on marketing or promotion.

However, it is not right to create a website or blog using the WordPress blogging platform. There are many circumstances to consider when making a blog for different purposes. (ex: eCommerce website, photoblog, Internet marketing blog)

Starting a WordPress blog, like starting a Udemy course, is challenging. Of course, you can outsource everything to get everything done very easily. However, the budget you have to spend is greater with building a website with WordPress CMS. That is where free WordPress hosting comes into play.

As you are a veteran human being in this complicated world, there is NOTHING for free. However, as a beginner in Online marketing, you can start your WordPress blog quickly with the help of free WordPress blog hosting services.

Free WordPress hosting service providers give away a certain amount of web space, monthly Bandwidth, tools, and other equipment you need to make a WordPress self-hosted blog.

Hosted WordPress Hosting vs. Self-hosted WordPress Hosting

There are two types of WordPress blogs. If you have a blog that is designed using WordPress.com blogging system (a free blogging platform), it puts under Hosted WordPress blogs. On the other hand, all WordPress websites and blogs hosted on third-party web servers are self-hosted sites.

Quality	Hosted WordPress Blog	Self-hosted WordPress Blog
Full Control	WordPress.com have full control of your site. For example, you cannot edit the .htaccess file.	You have 100% control of your site. This may differ from each web host. For example, managed WordPress hosting services limit certain heavyweight plugins.
Restrictions	A lot of restrictions. Even if you get a free blog from WordPress.com, it is better to use the BlogSpot blogging platform in this case.	No restrictions. You own your website.
Scalability	Very lower. It slows down business growth for many reasons, such as slow loading time.	Only you can stop growing your blog. Just only you!

Benefits of Free WordPress Hosting

There are many advantages of using a free website hosting service. A few of those extraordinary uses are given below.

You are a novice to Internet marketing or blogging

When I first started out as a blogger, I chose BlogSpot as my blogging platform. I was curious enough to find everything that I could do with Google blogger.

Like me, if you are a beginner at blogging, a better way to get experienced with the world’s best CMS, WordPress, is to opt for a free WordPress web hosting service.

That is not a must. However, as a beginner, to avoid hesitating, understand what blogging is, how it works, and what components you should have to stand out from the competition, you should pick the best free WordPress service to host your test WP blog without worrying too much about facilities and tools they provide.

You do not know what WordPress CMS is.

I still remember when I first migrated Pitiya (previously known as ProBlogTricks) from Blogger to WordPress. Yes, I had a little bit of experience with WordPress and how it works. However, in the mind, I had a big fear of various things. I did not know about MySQL, WordPress theme design, or what to do when my website breakdown was on.

These thoughts delay my migration to WordPress. However, AS I knew, my first web hosting company, Bluehost, had an excellent reputation on extensive resources for maintaining a WordPress blog successfully. They have specialized WordPress experts.

If you are like me and don’t know much more about coding, you can choose a good free WordPress blog hosting provider to host your WP blog. There you can learn lots of things such as;

• How to install a WordPress theme or plugin and customize the code (without troubling about breaking down your WP blog.)
• How to map a custom domain to your blog.
• How to design your WordPress theme.
• How to SEO optimize your WordPress blog.
• How to speed up your blog with or without using plugins.
• How search engine optimization works.

Why is Free WordPress hosting?

I receive a few emails per month asking me how to create a website, what blogging platform I use, and how to make a blog without spending money.

If you want to build a website using WordPress from scratch, test-drive a plugin and/or theme, and understand how WordPress works, you may opt for a free WordPress hosting service.

Because in the beginning, I also used a few top WordPress free hosting services. Some are top-notch services. They provided me cPanel, the ability to add a custom domain (not free of charge), CDN support, FTP access, and WordPress support.

However, not all free WordPress hosting providers give those services and add-ons. You should buy or upgrade to a Premium plan to feel the power of those features.

Disadvantages of Free Blog Hosting Services

Even though there are benefits to using a free blog hosting service to create your WP blog, it is not always recommended to opt for a free web hosting provider. Why? Here are some of those obvious reasons.

You do not Have the Control.

What even matters if you do not have control of your website, even if it offers free webspace, unlimited Bandwidth, Cpanel, custom domain, and other features?

Nothing, right? That is why you should buy premium WordPress hosting rather than sign up for a free hosting service.

If you are asked to sign up for a free hosting website that claims to provide free WordPress hosting with a domain name, you should think thrice about it before taking any decision.

Here’s why:

They can terminate your account permanently without prior notice

Yes, many free WordPress hosting sites have specified in their terms of service that they have the ability to close your web hosting account without prior notice. So, how do you get your website back? Nothing to do with your hand. 

You cannot change the Domain DNS records.

If you are wondering whether you can create another WP blog for a subdomain name (for your custom domain), don’t worry. Some web hosts do not provide that feature. Why? Because they do not like to give the full authority of your site to you!

You cannot whitelist, blacklist IP address(es)

Think about this for a moment. You have done everything right; installed WordPress on the server, mapped the custom domain, published a few posts, and customized your blog theme perfectly. You get up earlier the next day to see your blog’s performance. Suddenly, you hit a page that displays your IP address is blocked! What can you do under these circumstances?

If you want full control of your site, then choosing a free web host is not the best choice to take on.

Cancellation of your account at anytime

Do you have a big idea that has never been talked about on the internet? Is it a hot topic? So, no doubt your website will get tons of traffic from search engines and referral websites.

However, free WordPress hosting servers cannot seriously manipulate that amount of traffic. They will immediately send you an email mentioning that you have TWO options.

• Upgrade to a premium hosting package.
• Alternatively, we will close your account.

What option seriously has a greater possibility of happening? The second one, right? Even if you buy WordPress hosting from that company, it will not be as good as WordPress-optimized hosting services worldwide.

Doesn’t have a professional look

I think you will agree that most websites hosted on free WordPress hosting servers do not have a professional look.

How do you calculate the professional look of a website?

Apparently, theme design matters a lot when defining the professional look. However, it is not the only key to consider when it comes to online marketing. Here are a few characteristics of a well-made website;

• Have a custom domain:
• Loads website faster:
• Rank higher on SERPs (search engine result pages) for competitive keywords:
• Have a good-looking social profile:
• Quality content made by real people:

Even if you opt for the cheapest WordPress hosting package, you will get more add-ons to improve your website’s professionalism. Those you cannot get with any free web hosting service.

No future in business

If you had a dream to make a passive income through blogging and chose a free WordPress website hosting company to get you on the right path, let me explain this to you.

Never think that you can get everything for free. This belongs to the business world as well. If you have the plan to start a WordPress blog on a free WP hosting platform and then make some real money, first visit a few internet marketing forums for a moment and read a few of those “How to earn money through my blog” or “how to monetize my blog” threads.

You can find thousands of such-like appealing posts. Even websites that are hosted on premium web servers could not make much money. Why? Because marketing has changed during the last few decades.

More factors come into play when a customer thinks before making a purchase. If you want to run a business, either an eCommerce website, website portal, service blog, or a portfolio to showcase your colors, you must not go for a free WordPress hosting service.

Why? Because people think much more things than you assume:

1. Your website’s reputation: How the website is familiar to them.
2. Website’s professionalism: As I explained above, theme design and custom domain matter greatly.
3. The credibility of the website: The technical side of a site, such as SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), also causes successful conversion.
4. Server load time: 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Do you purchase a product from a website that takes hours to load? I do not. Do you?
5. User-friendliness: The whitespaces of web pages and other important aspects, such as visual content and colors, influence lower cart abandonment.

You cannot make money without spending money. You have to choose one of these two choices. To run a long-term business, selecting a free WordPress hosting service as the infrastructure is not the most intelligent decision you will ever make.

Best Alternative to FREE WordPress Blog Hosting

Free blog hosts are fine for newbies who want to learn WordPress and get their hands dirty. However, in reality, no free WordPress hostings are 100%. It is just another scheme for making money online. The tactic here is luring as many customers as they want to push over more promotions and make money.

If you want to convert your dream into reality, and plans into actual results, then you must go for premium WordPress hosting.

Why?

Because premium WordPress hostings offer many tools to build your blog. From cPanel to file manager and from shared hosting servers to dedicated, cloud, or VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting servers, they provide all tools and services you want.

The best alternative to Free WordPress Hosting

You are here because you want to start a WordPress blog on a small budget, right?

I recommend you pick reputable, reliable, and cheap WordPress hosting service provider like BlueHost.

BlueHost is the best alternative to free WordPress hosting. Here are a few of those amazing features of BlueHost WordPress hosting.

• Unlimited websites, disk space, and Bandwidth
• $14.99 valued custom domain name for free.
• 1-Click installation of WordPress
• Unlimited email accounts, unlimited email storage
• Money-back guarantee
• 24x7x365 WordPress experienced customer service in different ways
• Officially recommended by WordPress.org as the best WordPress hosting since 2005!

Click here to get BlueHost WordPress hosting.

Common Signs of Every FREE WordPress Hosting Service

Before you read about the best free WP hosts, take these typical signs seriously. This clearly differentiates free WordPress hosting from WordPress-optimized hostings.

Irritating Advertising

As a part of offering free web hosting, many free web hosting providers advertise on your website. You cannot control this without paying a fee or upgrading to a premium plan.

You may need to put advertisements on your website to make money. However, showing up irritating ads (banner ads, slide-in ads, pop-up ads, and video ads) can harm your online reputation, and for worse, it can put down your SERP rankings. So, if you want to run a successful blog to make money, then choosing free WordPress hosting might be the maddest idea.

The inability to map Your Custom Domain

Many free WordPress web hosting services offer domain mapping as a premium feature. So, if you want to add your domain to your blog, then you cannot do it with most free WordPress hosting services.

The worst thing is you get a subdomain similar to http://yourdreamname.freewebhoster.com. This domain might have thousands of websites that distribute pirated software, malicious products, and promotional content related to porn, guns, drugs, etc.

These bad aspects will not let you be a successful marketer and cost your time very badly.

Customer Support is bad.

This is one of the top key factors I consider when opting for a web hosting company. What even matters if you cannot get help about an issue from the web hosting company? Nothing matters, right?

Many premium web hosting services have outstanding customer service. They have different communication methods; online chat, email, Skype calls, and phone calls. The best part is most of them are available 24x7x365.

However, on the other hand, free web hosting companies do not have such excellent customer service. It could take from a few hours to a few days to get a response to the message.

Space and Bandwidth are limited.

Many WordPress free hosting services have an absolute limit of free webspace and Bandwidth.

Webspace is the total number of storage of your web content. It includes your blog post text, images, videos, plugins, and all other utilities.

When someone reaches your website, the web browser requests the content. So the higher your web pages’ storage is, the higher the bandwidth. Even though some free web hosts claim that they provide unlimited Bandwidth, that is not true in most cases. There is nothing called “Unlimited Bandwidth” in web hosting.

If your website heats the server (by eating more content), the web hosting company may ask you to upgrade to a premium plan or may terminate your account.

Weakness of Running Certain Plugins

This might be weird, but some free web host servers have thousands of websites hosted. Also, some servers are not upgraded to this gen’s technology (ex: cloud).

So, if you found a powerful yet heavyweight plugin, then you might not be able to run it well on your blog. (ex: To build an eCommerce website, you need powerful plugins that require a well-developed infrastructure. As you know, free web hosts could not run those plugins effectively.)

The long ….. …. response time

This is one of the over irritating problems people face when visiting a website. To reduce the server load time, you have to host your site on a fast web server and do some other technical stuff, such as using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) and minifying CSS and JavaScript files.

You do not have to wonder if your WordPress blog takes too much time to load. It is because it is hosted on a free WordPress host server.

Free WordPress Hosting is unreliable.

The trust factor comes into play not only in conversion optimization but also in WordPress hosting too. Premium WordPress hosting companies such as BlueHost, WPengine, and Hostgator have excellent brand awarenesses and reputations on certain things.

However, have you ever found positive reviews of the free WordPress hosting companies below?

That is why being a customer of reliable WordPress hosting makes you proud and inspires you to grow your online business.

Take Too much time to load web pages

As a result of hosting hundreds or thousands of websites on the same server, your site will take too long to load. You cannot get a much better result even if you use a premium CDN network such as MaxCDN.

As Google clearly said on their official webmasters’ blog that page loading time is a ranking factor, and you should not neglect how fast your website is loading. Fast website loading will satisfy search engines and customers and increase your conversions by an extended margin.

Not SEO Friendly

Have you ever found a website that is hosted on a free web hosting server rank higher on SERPs? Not any day, right?

Even though Google owns a BlogSpot blogging platform, we cannot find their sub-domain web pages that rank higher on search engine result pages for a highly competitive keyword.

Yes, there are 200+ search engine ranking factors. But, slow load time, long response time, and bad reputation of web host don’t allow your website to grow.

Shared IP addresses among other websites

Do you know that some web browsers, such as Google Chrome, block web pages that are hosted on individual servers? How does Google find what they are?

Well, it is through scanning IP address(es). Your web server might have one or hundreds of websites related to porn, drugs, gun, pirated programs, etc. in fact, the number even doesn’t matter. One of those sites can cause you to get your server’s IP address blocked by Google.

So, if you want to run your website on an unblocked server, you should focus on another host rather than choose a free web hosting provider.

No Necessary Resources

The web hosting company should provide certain tools to build a WordPress blog. Unfortunately, some free WordPress hosting providers do not offer them. Some of those essential resources are;

• WordPress Auto Installer: If you are new to WordPress, having the WordPress auto-install tool handy helps.
• Access to the root directory/ FTP access.
• Software Script.
• SMPT: Sending emails.
• Options to edit DNS (Domain Name Server) records
• Last PHP version
• Technical support

Unavailability of those necessary resources will not take your valuable time but also make you disappointed.

Regular Server Downtime

Who does not like to host their WordPress blog for free? With the growing number of websites hosted on the free WordPress hosting server, it will heat at certain times. (When most users request web content)

This higher number of requests will begin the server to break down. So your website will be offline at significant times of the day. That is terrible.

This is common for most free WordPress web hosting servers. No uptime guarantee is a causal thing.

Security

This is the latest but another critical sign of every free WordPress hosting service. Even Google takes website security seriously.

Can you even think about the feeling when someone hacks your hand-made website? It takes even worse when you do not have good support staff to resolve the issue.

If you regard your website or blog as a business, you must worry about the website’s security. Not controlling your site will cause many vulnerabilities, such as website hacking, DDoS attacks, and hosting malicious scripts.

To make a 100% secure WordPress blog, you should opt for a premium web hosting company.

Best Free WordPress Hosting Services

x10 Hosting – Free Hosting – Cloud Hosting with cPanel and Full PHP support

X10hosting is a convenient, all-you-need best free WordPress hosting service. It claims to provide many premium features for free. Here are a few critical features of x10hosting.

• 300+ one-click installs, including all popular third-party scripts. (ex: WordPress auto-installer)
• The latest version of the control panel or cPanel. (Makes it very easy for you to manage your hosting account. Ex create new MySQL databases.)
• Advanced versions of MySQL and PHP: PHP is needed to run WordPress. So, you can make your website faster with the latest PHP version and MySQL. PhpMyAdmin makes it very easy to manage MySQL databases. So, even a beginner can learn database management easily.
• Free WordPress hosting, no ads: Your website will run without putting advertisements.
• Configure email inboxes and domains: Create professional emails like name@yourwebsite.com and change DNS records as you need.
• R1Soft CDP Backup facility: You can use a free plugin such as a backup WordPress database on a daily basis. However, x10hosting’s tool will do it for you.
• Website Builder: Want to build a website from scratch? Use a website builder to quickly make your website on a free web hosting server.
• Provides Private Cloud hosting: Cloud hosting is a fast, reliable, and 99.99% uptime guaranteed web hosting type.

Freehostingnoads – Free web hosting without forced advertisements

As the website name describes, FreeWebhostingNoAds is a 100% ads-free web hosting provider. It claims to offer things like;

• 20 GB web space and 200 GB monthly bandwidth to run your WordPress site.
• POP3 Email Account to send and receive emails.
• Custom domain mapping.
• 3 PHP versions which you can change as your requirements. Even though the latest PHP version makes the website faster, some WordPress plugins do not support that at the beginning. As soon as they are supported, you can upgrade to the latest version of PHP through the account control panel.
• Script installer to install popular scripts such as Joomla, phpBB, and of course, WordPress.

BYET Host

BYETHost makes it easy to create a WordPress blog easy for you with its essential tools such as VistaPanel. It does not provide custom domain support in its free plan, but you can choose one of the tens of free subdomains. Here are the key features of ByeHost.

• 1000 MB (~1GB) disk space with 50 GB monthly transfer.
• 5 Addon domains and five parked domains.
• 5 MYSQL databases and PhpMyAdmin to edit the MySQL database.
• 256 script installers, including WordPress auto-installer.
• Automatic HTTPS SSL (self-signed cert) on all domains.
• Free FTP software and online file manager (maximum file size is 10MB)
• 5 Email addresses (includes free webmail and email forwarding)

Biz.nf

Biz.nf is another free WordPress hosting company that claims to offer 1-click WordPress installation and configuration. If you want to start a website from scratch, so check out whether these features suit your needs.

• 1000MB disk space with 5GB data transfer per month.
• 1-click script installer to make forums (Simple Machines (SMF), phpBB forums), wiki pages (MediaWiki and Moodle), photo galleries (Zenphoto simpler media website), web stores, Drupal, Concrete5, Joomla, and WordPress sites.
• Weekly basis, automatic data backups.
• Green Web Hosting (Eco-friendly web hosting that saves energy)
• Email accounts, email aliases, and email filters.
• Limited SMTP server access.
• Anti-SPAM, Virus Protection.

AwardSpace

AwardSpace offers various plans to host your website. It includes free web hosting with PHP and MySQL. You will get when you sign up for AwardSpace’s free package;

• 1 GB disk space with 5 GB of traffic per month.
• 1 Domain hosting with three subdomains.
• 1 MySQL database. (version 5.0)
• Joomla & WordPress Installer.
• PHP5, Perl/CGI-BIN, FTP access.
• 1 Email (IMAP, POP3), Webmail, and SMTP (email sending)
• 100% no ads.

100WebSpace

100WebSpace is a budget web hosting company that offers various plans to manage your online business. Their free hosting package includes these features.

• 100MB disk space plus 3GB monthly traffic transfer.
• One hosted domain, five subdomains, and 3 POP3/IMAP Email accounts.
• 1-click application installer.
• 99.99% server uptime guarantee plus SSD data caching.
• DNS management and webmail.
• SSL Certificate Generator.
• IP blocking and hotlinking protection.
• Password-protected directories, custom error pages, and one FTP account.

So, How do Free WordPress hosting companies make money?

Don’t you think free WordPress website hosting companies don’t make money? Actually, they make money.

There are a few ways; here are some of them.

Through placing advertisements

​You cannot find an excellent free WordPress hosting without ads. Putting ads on your website’s footer, sidebar, and top header makes them money.

Force upgrading to premium hosting packages

Some users test-drive each free web hosting company to find the best one that matches their needs. Once they find the best one, they might upgrade to a premium package.

​Redirecting traffic to an affiliate product

​Some free web hosts come with different conditions and terms. Even though many web hosts offer service as web space and monthly Bandwidth, some companies offer them as monthly unique visitors.

So, once the website reaches that amount, the free website hosting provider will redirect them to another page. Which might be their sales page, opt-in page, or affiliate page?

For example, WPnode was one of the top free WordPress hosts in a particular time period. However, a few months ago, they started redirecting their traffic to BlueHost, which is a low-cost WordPress hosting solution for beginners.

Through Email marketing

When someone signs up on the hosting company’s website, his email address stored on the company’s server and email marketing service. This allows them to send him promotional emails. If he buys a product or service, they will make money.

Want to be a professional blogger? Here is what I recommend for you…

I have been blogging since 2012 and have experienced lots of things about blogging. As a blogger who started from zero, I can give you two pieces of advice.

Not all free stuff are free. I will take your time and energy.To stay ahead of the competition, you should not use free stuff.

To clarify that, I always recommend my partners choose the best tools and web apps on the internet today. So what I have to say is that if you want to make a WordPress website or blog, be sure to choose a WordPress-friendly web host, whether it is a premium one.

I started my professional WordPress blogging career on BlueHost. It is not free. However, BlueHost is a low-cost web hosting company. In fact, BlueHost offers the cheapest shared hosting for WordPress users.

With unbelievable tools and options, you can start your WordPress blog on BlueHost for just $3.49/month. Not only will you get premium hosting for just $3.49/mo, but also a free .com domain name too. (Which is worth $14.99. However, you get it for free)

BlueHost offers an anytime money-back guarantee that no web hosting company offers right now. So you are never on the fence of defense. You can create any amount of websites as you want. If you do not satisfy with their service, just ask them for a refund, and BlueHost will give your money back without asking prior questions.

I know you will not do this because you will not find ANY cheap WordPress hosting like Bluehost anywhere.

Final words on free WordPress hosting sites

Like other businesses, the web hosting industry has evolved much faster during the last two decades. It was a daydream to make their website a few years ago.

Luckily for you, many web hosting services now offer low-cost hosting packages. Free WordPress hosting services take a significant portion because many bloggers and internet marketers have used them earlier in their business careers.

Even though there are many advantages of free WordPress hosting, as an intelligent person, you should not ever focus on free web hosting.

The best alternative to free WordPress hosting services is BlueHost. It is a low-cost WordPress web hosting service for shared plans.

So, what do you think about free WordPress hosting? Is it the best choice for a beginner? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.